In Part I of this six-part series I presented the President's explanation of why he can't use alternative options for coping with the default threat arising out of refusal to raise the debt ceiling, a summary of the kinds of difficulties characterizing it, and discussed two of seven options, selective default, and the exploding option, the President has to deal with it, apart from the way he seems to have chosen. Read more about Rationalization and Obligation, Part III: Premium Bonds, and Asset Sales

This series provides a framing document for Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS). In the four previous parts of the series, I pointed out that there are three classes of opponents of High Value Platinum Coin Seigniorage (HVPCS, $30 T and above). The first and largest group opposes all Platinum Coin Seigniorage (PCS) of whatever type. The second, opposes HVPCS, but favors using the Trillion Dollar Coin (TDC) for the limited purpose of avoiding the debt ceiling. The third, opposes HVPCS, and doesn't really favor using the TDC either, except, perhaps, as a last resort to avoid the debt ceiling. It favors an incremental approach to PCS beginning perhaps in the millions or billions in face value, and over a long period of time, after giving people years to adjust to Treasury using platinum coins with unusual, and unprecedented, face values, eventually building up to a TDC.

Parts two, three, and four, and this post (Part Five), and the remaining post in this series considers further objections to HVPCS brought forward by people in one or more of these categories, and my replies to them. As you're seeing, if you're following the series, the opponents of HVPCS are throwing everything but the proverbial kitchen sink at it. In this post, I'll consider some objections to PCS and HVPCS based on their predicted institutional impact. Read more about Framing Platinum Coin Seigniorage: Part Five, Institutional Objections

The US is broke. Government deficits are de facto evidence of a government gone wild. We’re careening toward Greece. Entitlements are the root cause of our fiscal woes, and the Chinese are coming for our grandchildren. How many Americans believe this garbage? My guess? Most of them.

Well, it's Springtime in DC. Time for the Peter G. Peterson Foundation's annual event. The Fiscal Summit, to be held on May 15, better named the Fiscal Cesspool of distortions, half-truths and lies, is a propaganda extravaganza designed to maintain and strengthen the Washington and national elite consensuses on the existence of a debt crisis, the long-term ravages of entitlement spending on America's fiscal well-being, and the need for long-term deficit reductions plans to combat this truly phantom menace. The purpose of maintaining that consensus is to keep an impenetrable screen of fantasy intact in order to justify policies of economic austerity. that have been impoverishing people and transferring financial and real wealth to the globalizing elite comprised of the 1% or far less of the population, depending on which nation one is talking about.

I then pointed to the first two Fiscal Summit Conferences in 2010 and 2011, identified some of the featured participants in both of these, and the then pending 2012 conference, and identified the primary myths used to form the neoliberal-based deficit hawk/austerian “fiscal sustainability”/”fiscal responsibility” narrative driving the politics of fiscal policy towards debate, discussion and passage of a long-term fiscal policy plan focused primarily on deficit reduction and long-term “fiscal responsibility” and “fiscal sustainability.” I then set out to present a detailed account of the five sessions of the April 2010 Fiscal Sustainability Teach-In Counter-Conference along with comments and references (links) to posts appearing since the Teach-In. The five sessions and accompanying Q & A, covered in posts 2-7 of this series, supplemented by additional post-conference work provide a fiscal sustainability/fiscal responsibility counter-narrative based on the Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) approach to economics.

Finally, Presentation Five, which we'll cover in this post was designed to highlight the proposals for full recovery favored by the MMT economists. These proposals are the counter to the austerity proposals of Paul Ryan, Pete Peterson, Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, David Walker, Barack Obama, and the rest of those convinced that the US Government has solvency/debt/deficit problems that must be solved by some combination of spending cuts and tax increases. Read more about The Fiscal Summit Counter-Narrative: Part Six, Policy Proposals for Fiscal Sustainability

One of the raps on deficit spending in neoliberal circles is that it will trigger substantial inflation or hyper-inflation. Even when mainstream economists grant the MMT point about the impossibility of the US becoming involuntarily insolvent, they will still insist that sustained deficit spending is a bad idea because it will inevitably lead to unmanageable inflation. A variant of their critique is that especially “pure deficit spending,” I.e. deficit spending without issuing debt instruments to absorb the increase in the money supply created by deficit spending, will be an inflation trigger. Read more about The Fiscal Summit Counter-Narrative: Part Five, Inflation and Hyper-inflation

[This is an important series of posts. As the elite tees up for Grand Bargain™-brand catfood, it's important to understand that the entire ZOMG!!!!! Teh debt!!!! narrative is not merely fakery, but fakery that's funded by those who will benefit from the looting, and that's not you. --lambert]

An issue at the core of all the fuss about fiscal sustainability is Government solvency. The deficit hawks and doves believe that Governments sovereign in their own currency can run out of money if they keep deficit spending, and keep borrowing to do it. They believe that if deficit/debt levels are high enough, then Government insolvency can occur, because eventually the burden of interest on the public debt will crowd out all other public spending and investments. So, they are for working towards debt/deficit reduction, “reforming” (i.e. cutting) entitlement spending, and raising taxes, though not necessarily on the rich. Read more about The Fiscal Summit Counter-Narrative: Part Three, Are There Spending Constraints On Governments Sovereign in Their Currencies?

It's hard to listen to the doomsday rhetoric of Austerians like Paul Ryan and intermittently the less hysterical, but equally mythical narratives of the President when he talks about deficit/debt reduction, when you know better; when you know that both are talking about a bogeyman that doesn't exist. Here's Ryan, the Republican wunderkind:

“We face a crushing burden of debt. The debt will soon eclipse our entire economy, and grow to catastrophic levels in the years ahead.”

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